Summertime is a great time for food and wine: bountiful farmers markets, travel and visits with family and friends, different grapes and wines for the warm weather and lighter fare. I was not at all disciplined with my blogging this summer, but I thought I might give you some highlights from our corner of the world.

Vegetables

Our terrific CSA (Crooked Row Fields) continues to deliver superb, organic, clean, fresh vegetables in great variety. New to our palettes so far are Dragon Tongue Beans, Komatsuna (a Japanese green), and all kinds and shapes of eggplants. The heirloom tomatoes have been spectacular, as are green beans, beets, lettuces, spinach, garlic, pickling cucumbers, and potatoes.

New York City

In August I did a three-day trip to NY, for food, wine and friends. Fun on all three counts. Found a great airbnb apartment in the Gramercy area; explored the Union Square Greenmarket, returning with a new and exciting green (Spigariello); had a lovely meal at a new restaurant in Brooklyn (LaRina Pastificio e Vino) with my friend, Jan; had a terrific thin crust pizza at Marta; and reveled in several wines stores with goodies I can not find at home.

Spigariello, washed

Cooking

Of course, with all these great ingredients, we had to do some intensive cooking when we were home. Barbara has perfected the art of making Calabrian eggplant polpette, which she served with spaghetti and tomato sauce. She also has been making wonderful cinnamon buns, adapting her recipe for challah dough, like her grandmother did.

I found an old Food & Wine article about Marcella Hazan’s take on Crazy Water and made a small amount of Hake poached in Acqua Pazza, topped with heirloom tomato and Shiso leaves. And I also did several meals with interesting dried beans, such as Rancho Gordo’s Eye of the Goat beans, which go very well with premium Portuguese canned tuna (Ventresca).